Foreign and Colonial Intelligence

The Illustrated London News,
vol. 44,
no. 1244,
p. 143.

February 13, 1864

FOREIGN AND COLONIAL
INTELLIGENCE.

AMERICA.

The Columbia brings news from New York to the evening of
Jan. 29.

The most important fact mentioned is the near approach of General
Longstreet, reinforced by 20,000 men, to Knoxville. Skirmishing
between his cavalry and the Federal outposts had commenced, and the
latest accounts state that great anxiety, amounting to a panic,
prevailed in the city.

The Confederates had made two separate attacks on Athens and
Florence, in Alabama, in both of which they are said to have
failed.

Despatches from Chattanooga report that the Confederate General
Johnston had fallen back forty miles south of Dalton.

The Federal batteries continued to throw shells into Charleston;
and it was reported that half the city had been abandoned by the
inhabitants.

General Butler reports that he had sent three transports and a
competent force up the James River, which landed seven miles below
Fort Powhattan and captured twenty Confederates, seven of whom
belonged to the signal corps, and brought away ninety negroes, besides
destroying large stores.

Re-enlistments in the Federal army are very numerous. Throughout
the West several entire corps have re-enlisted.

The trade of the Mississippi is still interrupted--indeed, almost
suspended--by the Confederate batteries.

Mr. Lincoln has been nominated by the Republican members of the New
Jersey Legislature for the presidency.

The delegates to the State Convention held at Little Rock,
Arkansas, have adopted a resolution prohibiting slavery.

In Congress the Senate has passed a resolution requiring members to
take the oath. Senator Bayard took the oath, and announced his
intention of retiring into private life. The Judiciary Committee of
the Senate has discharged from consideration the resolution to expel
Mr. Davis, of Kentucky, from the Senate. Senator Hale urges the
appointment of a committee to investigate the affairs of the Navy
Department, and proved statistically that the United States were
called upon to spend this year for the navy more than the combined
annual naval expenses of all the European Powers, excluding Denmark
and Italy, and forty millions more than the naval expenses of France
and England during the three years and five months of the Crimean
War.

Mr. Fernando Wood has spoken strongly in the House of
Representatives in favour of peace, declaring that the Administration
opposed the restoration of the Union and favoured the continuance of
the war for partisan advantage. He said that the most damnable deeds
were perpetrated under the plea of patriotism.